Part two of Heroes Reborn‘s extended flashback to June 13th affirmed many of the thoughts I had with part one, this would have been so much better if it came several weeks ago. The secrets surrounding the events of Odessa and the tragedy there-in unfurl completely, and the result is what should be a new energy going into the final five episodes as Noah knows what pieces he needs, and now has to find a way to put them all together. There are new complications though, and a few lingering questions, but everything was wrapped up in a neat little bow this just wouldn’t be Heroes.

Let’s began where we left off last week with Future Noah’s attempt to kill Past Erica only to be foiled in the attempt by Past Noah. The result is that Erica is shot, but she’s shot in the butt. Or the leg. Either way, an unusual person happens to come to her aid, Past Quentin. In the present, we know that Quentin is frantically trying to get to the bottom of the Renatus conspiracy and he enlists Noah’s help to find out what happened to his sister Phoebe. We also know that Quentin was killed in the raid on Renatus’ Colorado facility when Phoebe showed her dark side in the mission to save Hiro. Or did he?

It was a bit of a shock when Future Noah returns to his own time only to see Quentin wandering around. He seemed pretty dead, he and Noah had a touching final scene together and everything, but, you know, butterflies. If you thought that Quentin’s sudden return is suspicious, especially with earlier talk of shapeshifters, you were right. It seems that Quentin is working with Erica, who now walks with a cane in the present, which begs the question, was Quentin always a double agent, or was this a ripple caused by Future Noah’s unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Past Erica?

There time travel pronouns are making this review kind of difficult to get through, so let’s take a break to talk about everyone’s favorite couple, the Collins. Luke and Joanne find Dennis’ dead body, which puts a sad punctuation on any assumption that maybe he’s still alive. Later, we see for ourselves what we actually already guessed, Joanne is the one that started the killing when she stabbed to death the Ice Man from the peace summit that Dennis was so fascinated with. Luke was a bystander watching his wife “free the beast” on an evo, but you can see in that moment she has a terrible idea. Again, no surprises here, and as much as the backstory of Luke and Joanne could have lent some humanity earlier on in the series, it’s still a struggle to see what point any of this, or them, serves.

Speaking of people serving a purpose, everyone welcome back Matt Parkman. Apparently, he’s working for Renatus too, and he’s brought in by Harris to telepathically interrogate Past Noah. It was nice for the Heroes Reborn team to throw Greg Grunberg some work, but Matt’s appearance was even more pointless than the Haitian’s in episode one, although certainly not as fatal. Are they going to do more with Matt? I could care less, actually.

Further flashbacks show us how Carlos – long, forgotten in the grand scheme of things Carlos – came to receive an honor from the army he didn’t deserve, and it’s because he served with Malina’s protector Farah. Indeed, Farah used her invisibility powers to save Carlos and the other members of the squad, but allowed Carlos, who was hiding cowardly, to take the credit for the save so that she didn’t out herself as an evo. It was a nice call back, but putting Carlos and Farah in the same orbit seems oddly self-serving to the narrative. In Heroes, everything has to be connected, no matter how tangentially, and that’s just the way it is.

The tangents continue as we see how and why Otomo pulled Katana Girl out of the Evermore game and renamed Miko after his dead daughter. Despite the silliness of her origin, and her functionality in the story thus far, I actually have some fondness for Miko and her portrayer Kiki Sukezane. I would like to think that there’s still some story left for Miko because the show is giving us a lot of backstory we’re supposed to care about for a character whose storyline is seemingly over. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past Heroes to dick us around.

That leaves us the discussion about Tommy Nathan, and why one year ago he understood his destiny and had a home, while in the present he was a wanderer in the dark. It’s all a matter of deus ex penny, and the fact that Tommy-slash-Nathan is a Petrelli. You see, he isn’t a teleporter, like originally thought, but he has the ability to absorb the powers of other evos, one at a time. He absorbed his mother Claire’s invulnerability – hence her sudden passing in childbirth – and later he absorbed the teleporting powers of his adopted father, Hiro. It seems that the Nakamura family is a happy one, but as they say, all good things…

Casper’s pennies worked overtime this week, first erasing the immediate memory of Past Noah, and then erasing his mind again so that he thinks he was knocked out in the explosion at Primatech. Casper also used his pennies to erase Nathan’s mind, turning him into Tommy, hence retconning the kids entire life and creating some of the present problems he’s been experiencing. But why was it necessary to erase Nathan’s mind? Because of his father’s final sacrifice…

…Which we never got to see. Hiro’s fight against the Harrises last week was pretty good, and Hiro seemed very excited for a rematch, but the series, however, was not. So that makes me wonder, if we didn’t see Hiro fight and die, is he going to turn up again, perhaps at a dramatically pivotal moment? Of course he is! And what of Suresh? It’s hard to believe that so many people bought his “confession video” where he sounded like Osama bin Laden, but looked and acted like Heaven’s Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite. Was he taking credit for a terrorist attack that killed thousands, or selling peace and serenity for three easy payments? Surely, there must be redemption for Suresh’s good name.

So now we launch into the endgame it seems. Everyone knows the stakes, everyone knows the players (well, poor Carlos is still on his own), and the only real question left to answer is whether or not all the plotting and scheming will mean that the world can be saved. It would a shocking choice if the series were to end with the Earth as a charred cinder, but I’ve got think that Heroes Reborn will, as always, take the obvious route.

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